[BRIEF NOTE] Now really, Hillary

[rfmcdonald]

Since the office of the President of the United States of America is probably as close to that of Planetary President as I'll see in my lifetime, at least until the office of the President of the European Commission becomes more prominent, like many Canadians I've been paying a reasonable amount of attention to the Obama-Clinton race. I've tended to lean towards Clinton, on the grounds of her legal education and indirect experience with policy-making. She's also wrung a bit of sympathy with me, on the grounds that I think that some of the criticism of her is based on the perception that she's acting in an unfeminine manner, and gender-related prejudices like misogyny and homophobia are pretty similar (and Andrew Sullivan can just shut up). As for Obama, I'm worried about the let-down that his followers will experience when they realize that, shock!, Obama would have to behave as an actual politician when he's in office. A President Clinton, then, would please me.

But doing it this way?

Mrs Clinton activated the entire might of her campaign machine to exploit the remarks, which she called “demeaning”, “elitist” and “out of touch”. Aides handed out “I’m not bitter” stickers and surrogates took to the airwaves to fan the flames.

It emerged on Saturday that Mr Obama had, before an audience in the liberal bastion of San Francisco, tried to explain his trouble winning over white, working-class voters, the fabled “Reagan Democrats” who will be crucial in the general election.

He said: “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And it’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Mrs Clinton seized on the comments, believing that Mr Obama had at last committed an error big enough to change the dynamic of their race.

“The people of faith I know don’t ‘cling’ to religion because they’re bitter,” she said. “People embrace faith not because they are materially poor but because they are spiritually rich.

“People don’t need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them.”

In a clear attempt to further appeal to working class voters, Mrs Clinton downed a beer and a shot of whiskey yesterday at a campaign stop in Indiana.

1. Even if she is trying to appeal to working-class voters, I find Clinton's attempt to align herself with the American working classes as a woman of the people terribly unconvincing. She was wife of a man who was first the Governor of Arkansas then President of the United States then a public speaker commanding hundreds of thousands of dollars per experience, and has a pretty decent career of her own. It just strikes me as a bit silly, that's all.

2. About equally silly is the decision of both Obama and Clinton to campaign on culture wars grounds since their positions on said are pretty similar. A manufactured fight over something that neither person actually disagrees with strikes me as pointless, and potentially dangerous if it weakens the Democratic Party enough for the Republicans to take over.

Thoughts?